Announcements are the part of your service that move people to action. They help people take their next steps into community with your church. Why would you want to take a break from that on any given weekend? Here are a few reasons why I think it’s wise to stop doing announcements occasionally at your church:

Variety // Sometimes the baseball pitcher who is known for fastballs throws a change-up pitch just to keep his opponent wondering what’s coming next. If your weekend services are always the same … following the same format every weekend … they can become monotonous. Dropping your announcements every once in a while keeps people anticipating what’s coming up next!

Clarity // Deliberately not doing announcements means that you must choose what to cut. Communications clarity comes more from what you don’t talk about than what you do talk about. In other words, the effort to reduce what you say helps you decide what is most important to be talking about.

Quiet // Can we please stop selling people on coming to our next event? What if you had a weekend at your church where you just had people experience the service as it was happening rather than always focusing on what’s coming up next? Add quiet and remove the temptation to sell something.

Big Days // There are three or four days in your calendar when people are more likely to invite their friends — and their friends are more likely to attend. Cut everything else from the communications plan and just ask those friends to come back next week.

Teaching Leads // The heart of your weekend service is the message. It’s a significant reason people come to your church and it’s core to your church’s discipleship strategy. Sometimes the weight of the message or the content that you’re talking about warrants not distracting people with anything else. Or your message may have such a strong “call to action” that you don’t want to take away from it by talking about anything else in the service.

Tap the Brakes // There are usually behind-the-scenes people involved in preparing announcements. Maybe you have a video team that needs to provide editing or support to your video announcements. Some churches have people who help with graphic design and make slides to support this part of the service. When you decide to have a Sunday without announcements, you give these people a break. It provides relief in the system and helps your team breathe a little.

Rich serves as Operations Pastor at Liquid Church in the Manhattan facing suburbs of New Jersey. He blogs at UnSeminary.com and is a sought after speaker and consultant on multisite, pastoral productivity and communications. Visit Rich Birch at www.unseminary.com